


You Can't Remember (So Feel the Beat)

by Lizicia



Series: I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M, canon divergence from/before 2x09, skye doesn't exist, skye is not really there yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-27 03:36:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2677544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizicia/pseuds/Lizicia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Skye.'<br/>It keeps reverberating in Ward's head, not revealing any of its secrets but not leaving him be either. It's infuriating because there's nothing more to it, and that very same feeling of loss he's been haunted by seems to be connected to it as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can't Remember (So Feel the Beat)

**Author's Note:**

> Follows 'I Always Forget to Remember You'.

“Nice to see you, Miles.”

“What do you want? Or what does S.H.I.E.L.D. want now?”

The hacker is still cocky as ever but Ward knows that Miles is hired by S.H.I.E.L.D. and as such, has access to the network, has the means to find the answers he is searching for.

“What is _Skye_?”

“What?”

Ward moves closer and presses his gun to Miles' temple, showing just how little patience he has for the hacker's evasiveness in this moment.

“Search the database for _Operation Skye_. Make yourself useful.”

Miles laughs and tries to turn around but Ward presses his gun harder and he relents. “Did they fire you or something? How come you can't do it yourself?”

Without any warning, Ward fires his gun right next to Miles' head and the bullet enters the wall.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Miles jumps in his chair and instinctively covers his ears with his hands. “What the fuck, man!”

“See, that's your motivation, Miles. The next one will go into your head.”

“Okay, okay.”

He pulls up programs and Ward watches as his fingers move quickly over the keyboard and it's not five minutes before he's accessed the network and tries to initiate a search for _Operation Sky_.

“No, it's _Skye_ with an -e.”

Even with the corrected parameters, the search comes back empty.

“There's nothing here.”

He presses the gun against Miles' temple even harder. “There has to be.”

“There is nothing here. But if it's level 8, I can't access it remotely. You know that.”

And of course, he knows that Miles is right and that even his skills are limited. Still, that is no excuse for not providing Ward with what he needs, and so he pistol-whips Miles once, for good measure.

* * *

 

“What happened in Austria in 1989?”

May looks at Coulson, face unmoving. “Austria, 1989? Do you want to specify that?”

His brow furrows and he seems startled by the question himself. “I don't know. It's just this feeling I have. Like I've forgotten something which happened in Austria in 1989.”

May is still unimpressed. “You could just check the databases.”

“I have.”

“And?”

“And there is nothing significant. S.H.I.E.L.D. had no presence in Austria three years before and two years after that.”

She gives him a long hard look. “You need to get more sleep, Phil.”

He knows that but that's not why he's concerned with the events of 1989, whatever they might have been. And he also knows that those events were important but somehow, he's forgotten.

Looking at May, he doesn't even bother mentioning that he's certain it has something to do with an 0-8-4 because there's no beginning or end to that.

* * *

 

Ward paces around in his safe house.

_Skye._

It keeps reverberating in Ward's head, not revealing any of its secrets but not leaving him be either. It's infuriating because there's nothing more to it, and that very same feeling of loss he's been haunted by seems to be connected to it as well.

It's not an operation S.H.I.E.L.D. has conducted; that was far-fetched even before he went to Miles and while there is a slight chance that he didn't bypass the necessary clearance levels to find the records, Ward is now convinced that it has nothing to do with S.H.I.E.L.D.

_Skye._

The damned name doesn't leave him alone. At some point, without him understanding when or why or how, it stopped being a word and became a name, and he knows undeniably that it's someone's name. But whose?

At another time, he would ask Coulson or maybe Simmons but now that those ties have been severed, there's no one to confer with. He feels a twinge of remorse for the way he had to leave them behind, and the fact that he shot Agent Hand but she still managed to get kill Garrett, but he knew his loyalties from the beginning and the team was merely a part of his mission.

That doesn't mean that he doesn't regret never teaching Simmons self-defense – or Fitz, for that matter – or never learning just what May did in Bahrain, or never asking Coulson just how impressive the Battle of New York really was. But those are small things.

 _Hail Hydra_ was always underlying every interaction they had. Despite that, he was – _is_ – a specialist first and foremost, loyal to the man who found and remade him, not to the organization which has its own agenda and plans for world domination he wants no part in.

Instead, he is now reduced to a man who's haunted by a name which makes no sense because he can't remember ever knowing it, or when he forgot it.

He tries to ignore it for a while but it seems to get louder in his head, not allowing to be forgotten, infiltrating his dreams and his thoughts, not giving him any reprieve nor providing any answers. It's infuriating and he definitely doesn't need this.

And then it takes a turn for the worse.

* * *

 

“ _Did you just give me a compliment?”_

“ _I-no, I made a comment.”_

“ _A kind one. Did it physically hurt to do that? Do you need an ice pack? Wow, a compliment and a smile.”_

“ _Comment.”_

* * *

He wakes up and with a frightening sense of clarity, knows that the situation he just dreamed has actually happened, to him, and with the woman he could swear he's never seen before in his life but who is more familiar than the people he spent years working with.

And he knows that she is the Skye he's been looking for.

But it still doesn't mean he knows who she is.

Just that the feeling in the back of his mind, that nagging sense of loss and the void left behind is her doing. He misses her and he doesn't know why.

 


End file.
